What's eShopping about?

So this now has a demo on the eShop and is out September 2nd.

Oh! Is this the one from a while back which was in the Japanese direct but not the other versions and we all assumed we weren't getting a translation?

Yep! I played one level of the demo yesterday and it was decent fun, I reckon I'll wait on a sale down the road though because there's already a fair few games I want in September.

Does look good, but is so close to Astro, that it might be one that's a sale further down the road.

Quote :

This is a story of another Japan - a world different from the one you live in.

Weird phrasing for a Western announcement trailer but okay!

Yep this looks quality. I too have downloaded the demo., looking forward to giving it a shot.

I've been playing the excellent Grapple Dogs Cosmic Canines recently which is the sequel to criminally under-talked about Grapple Dog. Both games are GBA style 2D collection platformers with the main gimmick being your character uses a Bionic commando Grapple hook to get around and solve puzzles. Both games are £15 ISH each and by the end actually offer a fair bit of challenge.

I honestly have no idea why the games aren't talked about more but I think they are something alot you would like!

I think our dearly departed (not really) Zero was a big fan, I've seen them on his twitter.
If these were an actual GBA cart I could play on my micro I'd probably go bananas for them.

My memory, and I may be wrong, is that Smurf wasn't too keen on Grapple Dog 1 and I kind of didn't bother with either as a result. Slidey controls or something?

Oh and Bakeru was good actually.

I think Slidey controls on the first game is a fair criticism, I do feel that the sequel is alot more polished and having a second character that controls slightly differently (has a dash n ranged weapon) helps.

I think there was a decent amount of chatter around Grapple Dogs a couple of years ago. I remember treesmurf giving it a middling write-up in a reviews thread too, and later thinking that his 5/10 score was a bit unkind…but at the same time I totally understood where his disappointment might have came from. The aiming of that Bionic Commando-style grappling hook left too little margin for error and wasn’t all that smooth in execution, and in the games’ many precarious platforming moments it became unreliable and really annoying. Progression at all stages of the game was blocked behind too high a number of hidden collectables too, to the extent that they were hardly optional and almost mandatory. 

That said, I understand they’ve sorted out both those problems with this sequel…the issue is, even with Cosmic Canines’ mega review scores I don’t think I liked Grapple Dogs quite enough to be clamouring for a £15 sequel. I thought it was pretty good with decent potential for a sequel.

I'll definitely be picking up the sequel at some point, the performance was another issue for me which I believe was fixed after I played through it but I never went back to see the difference. All that aside I was certain there was potential there which is why I picked it up quite swiftly for Fantasy Critic once it was announced and review scores suggest I was correct to, I can see this being a near Christmas pickup.